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Tech feature: How Team Leopard Trek got their spots

The mad 11th hour scramble to craft the new road squad's image

1 / 10

Team Leopard-Trek's Trek Madone 6.9 SSL bikes were produced to an amazingly accelerated timeline

(James Huang/BikeRadar)

2 / 10

Actual team bikes will also wear matching graphics on the wheels and are also equipped with Schwalbe tubular tires and Speedplay Zeros instead of the Bontrager treads and Shimano pedals shown here - this was just a loaner provided to media for test rides during the presentation.

(James Huang/BikeRadar)

3 / 10

Trek say each of the first batch of team frames required about 10 hours of labor just for paint

(James Huang/BikeRadar)

4 / 10

The big, tapered head tube leaves plenty of room for logos but Trek have kept things relatively quiet up front

(James Huang/BikeRadar)

5 / 10

The front end of the bike is mostly finished in an attractive silver

(James Huang/BikeRadar)

6 / 10

Team Leopard-Trek's image is intentionally simple, owing to their creed that it's really all about the racing

(James Huang/BikeRadar)

7 / 10

If you look carefully, you'll see that the 'Madone' decal is a little thick beneath the clear coat. Later team bikes will have thinner water transfer decals that will sit flatter on the tube surface

(James Huang/BikeRadar)

8 / 10

Likewise, the 'Shimano' logo on the chainstay is a little thicker than it'll be on later iterations of the Team Leopard-Trek Madones

(James Huang/BikeRadar)

9 / 10

The Mercedes-Benz logo is discretely applied to the seatstay wishbone

(James Huang/BikeRadar)

10 / 10

Trek say they couldn't have met the incredibly short delivery deadlines created by the late team name announcement were it not for their in-house production and finishing facilities

Team Leopard Trek were officially presented to the world in grand fashion less than a week ago. Their tasteful-looking black, white and sky-blue road and time trial bikes were unveiled, along with the similarly elegant kits they'll be wearing in competition, starting with the Tour Down Under later this month.

To the casual observer, everything was placed just as it needed to be. But behind the scenes, there was a mad 11th hour scramble to craft the Leopard Trek team's polished image and the squad's backers had to operate on an incredibly accelerated timeline. According to Trek road brand manager Nick Howe, even the team's co-title sponsors and main equipment suppliers weren't made aware of the final team name until mid-December.

As a result, Trek – along with clothing sponsors Craft – not only had to finalize the design for the bikes, kits and helmets but also build, paint and deliver those items in less than 10 days, along with all of the marketing material and essentially much of the image and identity of the team itself. A more typical timeline is closer to 30-45 days just for the design work.

"It's not just a kit or helmet design," said Howe. "It's the helmet, it's the bike, it's the website, it's the video, it's the identity on our website, it's building that page, it's putting together a marketing campaign that tells as many people as we can, 'this is what we've done' and gets the message out – that work almost supersedes the bike design. It's an amazing amount of work and a really large number of people killing themselves to do it."

Compounding the issue was the number of frames the company had to deliver by the first team camp: around 100 in total, according to Trek road product manager Tyler Pilger, with every frameset requiring around 10 hours of labor to prep and paint on top of actual manufacturing time. And that's just road framesets – time trial bikes aren't even counted there and both numbers will only grow as the season progresses.

Each of the nearly 30 riders on the roster will have a race road bike, a home road bike and a race time trial bike. Plus many riders will have a spare of each – or even multiple spares – and additional framesets are kept in reserve. Add in all of the Trek-supplied Bontrager wheelsets, their multiple available section depths and the custom graphics that will adorn each one, and it's no surprise that Howe said the pressure to deliver was intense.

Trek say each of the first batch of team frames required about 10 hours of labor just for paint:

Trek say each of the first batch of team frames required about 10 hours of labor just for paint

"There was significant pressure on creative to get the product done and significant pressure that comes all the way from the top in working with a team that's more prevalent in the global community than almost any other team we've worked with – and that's working with guys like Lance [Armstrong] and [Alberto] Contador," he said. "This team already was gathering more attention. There was an extraordinary amount of focus and other projects were set aside in order that this be completed in the short time that it was."

Howe admitted, though, that a lot of diligent work done earlier on made things a tad less hectic as roughly "50 to 60 percent" of the design was already completed before the final details were in place. "Our creative director had been spending time at the design firm that the team had hired developing an identity for the bike so it could be pretty plug-and-play and we could get the last bit of logo on to the bike and get into production with it," he said.

"At the same time, manufacturing had been planning for months to pull the necessary frames. What gets missed here is that we produced all of the frames for the RadioShack team as well; they all hit their deadlines and they got them before team camp and they were painted and built and ready to go."

Even so, Pilger said the company had to make some necessary compromises in order to hit their deadlines, namely in regards to some of the sponsor decals and graphics. Whereas Trek would normally use super-thin water-transfer decals to maintain as smooth a finish as possible, this first batch was produced using thicker vinyl decals cut and delivered in just two days by AJ Eschwig at Victory Circle Graphix – the same company who produce most of the name decals you see on pro riders' bikes.

Nevertheless, Pilger stressed that none of this would have been possible had Trek not had their own in-house paint and production facilities in Waterloo, Wisconsin. Whereas some other team riders show up at their first camps to stopgap bikes with plainer or even fully stock finishes until team-spec bikes can be finished up, Team Leopard-Trek can hit the ground running and keep this first batch of frames in rotation for the rest of the season.

"I think it would be unrealistic to say we achieved everything that we wanted to but there's a philosophy at Trek: perfection is something you always strive for but you might never attain," said Howe. "All told, the identity that was developed and the way that we worked with the team and the fact that the team had their frames ready to go at the launch – even the design elements that went into the launch were massive and the videos that went into that and all of that happening in such a short timeline – for the amount of time that we had, we have to be thrilled with the results."

If you look carefully, you'll see that the 'madone' decal is a little thick beneath the clear coat. later team bikes will have thinner water transfer decals that will sit flatter on the tube surface: if you look carefully, you'll see that the 'madone' decal is a little thick beneath the clear coat. later team bikes will have thinner water transfer decals that will sit flatter on the tube surface

If you look carefully, you'll see that the 'Madone' decal is a little thick beneath the clear coat. Later team bikes will have thinner water transfer decals that will sit flatter on the tube surface